Archive: Mar 2009

Katie M. sent in a link to a post at Vast Public Indifference about gender in Pixar films, specifically how they tend to focus on male characters, with female characters in smaller or supporting roles. As Caitlin says in the original post,

The Pixar M.O. is (somewhat) subtler than the old your-stepmom-is-a-witch tropes of Disney past. Instead, Pixar’s continued failure to posit female characters as the central protagonists in their stories contributes to the idea that male is neutral and female is particular. This is not to say that Pixar does not write female characters. What I am taking issue with is the ad-nauseam repetition of female characters as helpers, love interests, and moral compasses to the male characters whose problems, feelings, and desires drive the narratives.

Here are some images showing main characters from a number of Pixar films. Clearly there are a lot I left out; I chose these both because they were mentioned in the original post by Caitlin, because I’ve seen them, and because they illustrate the general trend.

From “Cars,” a movie in which almost all the characters are male and female characters are mostly car-groupies who swoon over the main character (though there is a female attorney car who doesn’t fall into that category):

“Monsters, Inc.,” where the two central characters are male:

“Toy Story,” same as above:

“A Bug’s Life,” in which not only is the main character male, the actual behaviors of male and female ants have been switched to fit in with our ideas of appropriate gender roles (for another example of changing the behavior of animals to fit human gender norms, see this post on “Bee Movie”):

We do see a Pixar film with a female main character, however: the upcoming”The Bear and the Bow”:

According to Wikipedia, this is Pixar’s “first fairy tale.” So apparently though we get a female lead here, she’s of the spunky-princess type often found in fairy tales.

I have read, in discussions of gender in children’s films, that there is a general belief in the industry that everyone will watch a movie with a male lead character, but boys will be turned off by movies with a female lead. So we see the pattern Caitlin points out: males are the neutral category that are used when the movie is meant to appeal to a broad audience, while females get the lead mostly when the movie is specifically geared toward girls. The assumption here is that girls learn to look at the world through the male gaze (identifying with and liking the male lead, even though he’s male), while boys aren’t socialized to identify with female characters (or actual girls/women) in a similar manner.

I’m torn as to whether I think boys would avoid movies that had female leads. On the one hand, a big part of masculinity is rejecting all things feminine, so I can imagine boys deciding they hated any movie that seemed to be for or about girls. On the other hand, I wonder what would happen if we had more films aimed at kids that had female leads but didn’t fall into the traditional “girl’s movie” categories (such as fairy tales). If “A Bug’s Life” had a female lead but was otherwise the same type of movie–one aimed at a general audience, not specifically girls–would boys reject it? Most of the animated movies I can think of that had females as the main character were focused around romance and other topics deemed feminine (except maybe “Mulan,” where that’s not the main focus), which obscures the issue of whether boys would watch a movie with a female character if it was treated as a general-audience movie. [Note: See the comments for some other examples of movies with female leads that weren’t necessarily romantic-centered, such as “Lilo & Stitch” and “Alice in Wonderland,” as well as some non-animated ones.]

I dunno. Thoughts?

UPDATE: In the comments, Benjamin L. makes a great point:

Something to consider is that most of the people working on Pixar films are men. It’s possible that they might feel unable to successfully create and write dialog for compelling female characters. Take a look at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pixar_films Out of the all the writers and directors of Pixar’s films, one is female–Rita Hsiao. Significantly, the films she has worked on, Mulan and Toy Story 2,  are unique in that they both have prominent female characters.

Miriam at The Oyster’s Garter offered a nice discussion about fragile ecosystems and human intervention.   She uses Macquarie Island (located between Antarctica and Australia) as an example (based on an article in the New York Times).  She writes:

Like on many isolated islands, the native birds evolved without predators and live in burrows.  Introduced cats were eating the birds and running amuck. So researchers embarked on an intensive cat-elimination program…  The only problem is that there [were] also introduced rabbits and introduced plants. With no more cats, the rabbits bred like rabbits and ate all the native plants. Introduced plants took over the bare slopes and prevented the native birds that this was all supposed to help in the first place from nesting in the best burrowing sites. 

Human intervention, then, changed the landscape (before on the left, after on the right):

(Of course, human intervention had also shaped the landscape on the left. )

This before and after picture is useful for thinking about the interaction of humans with their environment, the way in which humans are part of ecosystems, and the difficulty of figuring out how to manage environments once we’ve taken on the role of custodian.

(Image from Discover magazine.)

Amanda M. submitted this commercial for a bikini razor and trimmer. Notice how order, beauty, and civility in horticulture is linked with taking the razor and scissors to your pubic hair. God forbid it be unruly, as bushes are in nature.

I suppose I should be glad that none of the bushes just shriveled up and disappeared entirely. And I am.

Via Alas A Blog.

The solutions for parentless (and unparented) children have varied tremendously over history and they vary, in part, based on the particular technological, economic, and cultural realities of the time.  For more than 75 years, one answer was the orphan train.  

In the 1850s,

…thousands of children roamed the streets of New York in search of money, food and shelter–prey to disease and crime. Many sold matches, rags, or newspapers to survive.  For protection against street violence, they banded together and formed gangs. Police, faced with a growing problem, were known to arrest vagrant children–some as young as five–locking them up with adult criminals (PBS).

At the same time, farmers in the country were having as many kids as they could because kids were great farm labor.  They could use as many hands as they could get. 

So, in 1853, a minister named Charles Loring Brace started the orphan train.  Brace believed that farmers would welcome homeless children, take them into their homes, and treat them as their own.  So he rounded up the kids, got parental permission when he needed it, and took the city kids to the country.  Between 1854 and 1929, the trains took over 100,000 children to adoptive parents in 47 states and Canada.

On the orphan train (image here):

Children lined up to board the train (1920) (image here):

The orphan train in Michigan:

Orphan train children (images here):

Howard with his adoptive parents, the Darnells (1910) (image here):

Orphan train children with their chaperones in Bowling Green (1910) (image here):

An ad and a news story from the Tecumseh Cheiftan (1893) and Nehama County Herald (1915) respectively (found here):

We may have flight attendants instead of stewardesses these days, but the call button on this Greyhound bus (on its way from Sioux Falls to Omaha) reminds us that the serving class is figuratively, if not literally, female:

Also see this post on sexism in aviation (then and now) and this contemporary Continental ad with sexual innuendo.

Thanks to Stephen W. for the picture!

If you’re looking for a documentary about the U.S. porn industry, PBS now has the entire documentary “American Porn” available for free online.

Anna sent in a link to Courage beer’s “take courage” ad campaign, in which men are shown in various situations where they are told to”take courage” in the face of a proctology exam, ugly sweater, and the following:

Both Anna and I are a little confused by this one. What’s he supposed to be needing courage for, exactly? Is it that his girlfriend is asking if her butt looks big? Or that she thinks she looks good and he’ll have to be seen with her dressed like that? When I first glanced at it I thought it was her thinking she looked good and him being grossed out, but when I looked closer, I think it’s the “does my butt look big?” scenario. Is he supposed to take courage and lie, or take courage and tell the truth?

Notice how the ad uses a not-super-skinny woman in it, but ridicules how she looks. Clearly the answer to “does my butt look big in this?” is supposed to be “yes,” and we’re supposed to find her laughable in that outfit. What I’m not quite sure about is whether she’s being presented as inherently laughable, or as a woman who is attractive and it’s only the dress that makes her unappealing. Thoughts?

Anna was also interested in how the ad portrays relationships between men and women. For some reason it reminds me a little of the last video in this post of Errol Morris Miller beer commercials, in which men clearly find women trivial and annoying.

UPDATE: In a comment, Christian suggests, “It’s about him drinking her beautiful. Get a Courage and you get over it (the butt) or her attitude “does my butt look big?”.”

And Trevira adds,

I think this ad directly refers to the ‘insecure woman’ character played by Arabella Weir in the popular UK tv sketch show ‘The Fast Show.’  The character’s catchphrase was ‘does my bum look big in this?’ (Weir even ended up writing a novel with the same title!).

So there may be a cultural reference here that escapes us non-Brits.